How Strategic are Political Activists? - Evidence From a Natural Field Experiment
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Abstract: Do political activists’ effort choices depend on their beliefs about the effort of their peers? Are party supporters strategic in their decision to contribute to political campaigns of their party? We present natural field experimental evidence from a Western European country to examine how activists’ effort choices depend on their beliefs about fellow party members’ effort. In the context of a large door-to-door canvassing campaign, we conduct a natural field experiment with the supporters of a major political party. We randomized whether supporters were given true information about intentions of other party members to contribute to the party’s campaign. Eliciting supporters’ prior and posterior beliefs, we confirm that the information successfully shifted supporters’ beliefs. We document that the exogenous shift in beliefs affects supporters’ self-stated intentions to help in the door-to-door campaign as well as their actual canvassing effort using unobtrusive behavioral data from the party’s canvassing activities. Specifically, we find that activists who learn that fellow party members engage in more canvassing than they thought reduce their canvassing activities. Effects are particularly large among first-time canvassers, suggesting that informational treatments work more strongly among inexperienced party members. We conclude that political activists’ effort choices exhibit strategic substitutability.
Date: 8 February 2018, 16:30 (Thursday, 4th week, Hilary 2018)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Lukas Hensel (University of Oxford)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Part of: Applied Microeconomics Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Erin Saunders, Anne Pouliquen